EMCCA: An enhanced mesh coordinated channel access mechanism for IEEE 802.11s wireless mesh networks

Abstract

In this paper, we present a channel access mechanism, referred to as the enhanced mesh coordinated channel access (eMCCA) mechanism, for IEEE 802.11s-based wireless mesh networks. The current draft of IEEE 802.11s includes an optional medium access control (MAC), denoted as MCCA, which is designed to provide collision-free and guaranteed channel access during reserved periods. However, the MCCA mechanism fails to achieve the desired goal in the presence of contending non-MCCA nodes; this is because non-MCCA nodes are not aware of MCCA reservations and have equal access opportunities during reserved periods. We first present a probabilistic analysis that reveals the extent to which the performance of MCCA may be affected by contending non-MCCA nodes. We then propose eMCCA, which allows MCCA-enabled nodes to enjoy collision-free and guaranteed channel access during reserved periods by means of prioritized and preemptive access mechanisms. Finally, we evaluate the performance of eMCCA through extensive simulations under different network scenarios. The simulation results indicate that eMCCA outperforms other mechanisms in terms of success rate, network throughput, end-to-end delay, packet-loss rate, and mesh co- ordinated channel access opportunity-utilization.